EDITOR’S LETTER

What is home?

For each of us itsmeaning is something different. And for most of us, it has likely changed as our circumstances in life have, also.

Those life changes could be related to relocating for a new job or maybe it’s moving back to a place where your fondest memories were formed.

Returning to a place we love grounds us. It makes everything both tradition and treasure, all at the same time. The same can be true of a place where we chose to live. Setting down roots to become a part of that community allows our needs and desires to grow within a social and cultural system of our choosing. It helps us to grow a home and create our history. For those of us who move away, thinking we’ll find something “better” out in the world we discover, upon returning to what we call home, find that rediscovering what home means is worth more than gold.

Some of us are content with the place we call home – there is no need to go in search of anything else. Growing our home, both socially and aesthetically, is important to us. We entertain our closest friends, plant gardens, raise our families; it is the place we love and can’t imagine ever leaving it.

Home is where we have our roots. Family is important and the idea of living in homes and on the same land that our ancestors did is important to many of us as a way to connect to the past yet build the future. We may find ourselves doing what generations before us have done by keeping a family business going. Honoring a family tradition in this way has kept many of our Southern families working together and making a living.

Realizing where you have been in life can make home even more meaningful. Sometimes, when we get back to where we’re from we realize that we’re misplaced – so to speak – in life. Living in a big city isn’t for everyone; neither is living on the coast, if your heart is in the mountains. The sooner we find that out for ourselves, the better. That lesson seems simplistic to realists, but it’s not. Having the courage to find that for you and your family? That takes both guts and time.

Finding home is finding magic. It is the place where you can feel most grounded, yet able to dream of what you can be.

Publisher Genie Gaither Jones // Editor-in-Chief

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